Ink Spots is a blog dedicated to the discussion of security issues across the spectrum of conflict and around the world. Our contributors are security professionals with interests and expertise ranging from counterinsurgency, stability operations, and post-conflict environments to national security strategy, security cooperation, and materiel acquisition. We hope this site will be a forum for discussion on both the issues of the day and broader, long-term developments in the security sphere.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Coming into the weekend, I always imagine that it'll be an opportunity for me to get caught up in all the reading I've yet to make a dent in, just carting it to and from work in a manila folder all week. Rarely works out that way, but here's hoping!

And one I've just finished reading, on which there will certainly be some commentary later: the Aerospace Industries' Association's threat piece "The Unseen Cost: Industrial base consequences of defense strategy choices." If you like to see the defense industry making dire predictions and pressuring defense planners to build strategy around profit-based procurement considerations, you'll love this one!

Gunslinger: I'm going native this weekend, thanks to a few documents sent my way by our good friend SNLII. I'm embarrassed to say I've never read anything from the insurgent's side, outside of readings on the American Revolution.

Stacked between the toothpaste and the cell phone charger are Biddle’s article, of course, as well as print-outs of a very interesting debate in the Boston Review where a bunch of extremely smart people (Mike McGovern, Larry Diamond, and William Easterly, to name but a few) respond to Paul Collier’s proposals for the “Bottom Billion”—including his rather controversial suggestion that international military force should be used to restore constitutional legality in the case of a coup.

If anyone is looking for me, I will be there. Have a great weekend everyone.

Lil:

I just got back from a very long week of interviewing people in New York for a work project so I'm pretty exhausted (it looks like Alma's taking some time to enjoy NYC this weekend, something I didn't get to do much of this time).

Anyway, I'm still working on Prunier's Africa's World War--it's something like 400 pages long so it's going to take a while.

2 comments:

The subtitle for the Bergen article is interesting...."Why Afghanistan is not Obama's Vietnam." Huh.

(A minor blog comment point - how come you can't copy and paste into this space?)

So, is all this arguing back and forth really over how long to give the Obama administration in Afghanistan? I think they have only a year or so. If the economy continues to stagnate, no one will be in the mood to pay for expensive campaigns abroad. I could be wrong about that, it's not like I'm not wrong about a lot of things.

Sorry, I hope that wasn't too political, but I don't see how it is not part of the discussion.

Contributors / Email / Twitter

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed by our contributors are solely their own. These views should not be taken to represent the official or unofficial position of their employers, nor of any government or other institution.